The death sentence handed to a Canadian convicted of drug smuggling reminded the world that China is the world’s top state executioner. But as former MP and veteran human rights observer David Kilgour tells Convivium readers, Beijing’s vicious persecution of its own minority populations rivals Maoist-era inhumanity.

Freedom of belief is essential to any open society. It is difficult for anyone who has not lived under a totalitarian regime of one stripe or another to understand the ways of the Party-state in China, especially on the matter of religion. The world's attention is drawn to the tribulations of believers in the world's most populous nation by recent headlines such as, "Dalai Lama calls Chinese insistence on picking his religious successor 'a disgrace'," "China calls Vatican 'unreasonable' in bishop spat," and "Leading pastor in China's underground Protestant c hurch sentenced to two years in labor camp." And since 1999, shocking photos have emerged of Christians being beaten and dragged, weeping as their house-churches were bulldozed..